


Best Years FAQ and extended information

by ireallyhatecornnuts (CharleyFoxtrot)



Series: Best Years 'verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, not a fic sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharleyFoxtrot/pseuds/ireallyhatecornnuts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've gotten some questions about Best Years, and I have some small author headcanons that are going here.  Supplemental material to the 'verse, but not actual fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Years FAQ and extended information

SO I have gotten an awful lot of questions about Best Years, and an awful lot of praise. First off, I wanted to thank everyone: I _really_ didn't expect this kind of response, namely because 1. high school AU is such a turn-off for so many people (oftentimes, myself included), and 2. it's SO BLOODY LONG. But a lot of people seem to have really liked it! It makes me unbelievably happy that you all enjoyed this, especially those of you who connected with my original characters. I'm so glad I could entertain you!

I have this thing, I _really_ dislike that AO3 adds my replies to the comment count, so I don't generally reply there, although I do read each and every one and kind of make helpless squealing noises that my spouse gets concerned about. So, without further ado, some of the stuff that didn't make it into Best Years, and some of the questions I've been asked:

**THE 'VERSE**

The alternate universe Gabriel created was, as Castiel said, a bubble universe. Creating the entire universe over again while in his depleted state would have been impossible; as it was, creating this universe (he says in it that he "copy pasted" the Midwest, but that's actually not true -- the universe spans the entire globe with a sort of rules-of-physics qualifyer to account for the fact that there isn't actually a sun or a moon) drained him of power which is why it took him so long to actually resurrect himself.

Far more of the people inhabiting the Best Years alternate universe were souls-in-protection than Gabriel would lead Dean and Cas to believe; all of this generation of prophet - including Kevin! although he was only about 2 years old - and a huge amount of psychics and a few other key players were there, although not all of them in Lawrence. I'd say about a quarter of the people in Lawrence were "real," because they needed to be kept out of Crowley's hands, or the hands of the Leviathan (which are still roaming around at this point; one of the things Gabriel does once he's up to full power and alive again is to take care of that issue, on God's orders). 

Essentially, what Gabe did is he went back to 1996 -- far back enough that Crowley couldn't easily reach it, but close enough that _most_ of the people who needed to be protected were still ALIVE then and thus wouldn't be super-disoriented -- and literally copy-pasted, as he said, the entire globe. He pasted it into a "bubble" in between Earth and Purgatory, and as he transferred the real souls from the real world, their corresponding fake soul disappeared. For an archangel, this is an easy task; for a dead archangel it's monumental, but not impossible. The fact that he had to do it in a rush and very quickly wipe their memories after 1996 is part of the reason there's been psychic bleedthrough upon return.

I DID A LOT OF RESEARCH FOR THIS 'VERSE. I lived through the 90's, of course, but I wasn't very aware of the world around me at the time, being only 13 or so years old at the time, so I did an actual shit-ton of research, up to and including how much tuition was at all of the schools Dean and Castiel applied to in 1997, and what the Top 50 hits at the time were, how much gas costed, even what burger joints were available in Lawrence back then. I like things to be accurate!

**JUSTIN**

Justin is one of my favorites. He, like Vicky, sort of sprung into existence fully-formed, and he grew on me. At first he was a throw-away character to make fun of Dean, but then he started nagging and decided to be a hero when Cas got attacked. So he has a lot of backstory that didn't make it into the fic.

His mother died and his dad sort of abandoned him so he lives with his maternal grandmother (who immigrated here from South Africa after a _lot_ of struggle, so that her daughter wouldn't be born into the Apartheid). She's very hard on him but she loves him a lot. He likes working on cars and thus, his grammy's car is the best-running car in his part of Lawrence. 

Justin is actually black. I felt _so stupid_ when I realized, after publication, that I hadn't indicated his race and that people were going to assume he was white, because when I was originally writing that part he wasn't going to show back up. He has dreadlocks and tends to favor Marley shirts, kind of clinging to his version of black culture because he lives in a really whitebread area. His hero is and has always been Nelson Mandela, ever since he was very young; when Mandela was elected president a few years prior to Best Years Justin actually cried with his grammy.

Justin, like Vicky, was a person of interest who was shoved into the alternate universe to be protected. He's the only of the burnouts who was a real person and not a karob-soul, and is a psychic. He isn't nearly as strong a psychic as Vicky so Crowley was unlikely to come after him, but Gabriel wasn't taking any chances. 

Justin is currently 35 years old and lives in Pennsylvania, working in fast food (hah; he doesn't have kids though so at least he proved Dean wrong there) and hoping to relocate to Oregon. He moved from Lawrence shortly after he graduated, when his grandmother died. He's experiencing some psychic bleedthrough, although not to the level of Vicky, and after disappearing for one day and having visions of a different life he started attending college for automotive science. He's the oldest person in his class.

I might write this into a story at some point, but about six months after they pick up adult!Vicky from Missouri's place, they run into Justin on a case and it scares the shit out of the guy. Dean has to give him a sort of crash course on fighting the supernatural because he gets caught up in that case, but then afterward they kind of explain everything. He is scared shitless of Castiel, because his grandmother used to talk about angels being warriors of God, huge and terrifying, which perversely amuses Castiel. Dean winds up encouraging him to keep up with the college and calls in a favor to Charlie to get some of Justin's misdemeanors wiped off his record to help ease his path toward graduating.

**BALTHAZAR**

_(trigger warning: abuse and suicide)_

I've gotten some questions about why I chose Balthazar, out of all of the angels, for the role I did. The answer is that I was really bored and tired of seeing Castiel's abusive relative being played by Zachariah and I just sort of picked the first angel who came to mind (keep in mind that Naomi barely existed when I wrote this fic, and I always forget Virgil exists).  

Obviously, Balthazar was a karob-soul, but he was based on the life of a person from the real world; basically Gabe changed his image and his last name (the real guy's name, strangely, was ALSO Balthazar, which is probably why Gabe went with that) but his story is really sad. 

Real-world Balthazar had a gambling addiction and got sort of stuck raising his nephew after his brother and sister-in-law got arrested and sent to federal prison on drug-trafficking charges. His nephew was on the autism spectrum and while he never outright abused him like he did Castiel in the AU!Verse, their lives were both pretty miserable because of their lack of ability to communicate with each other. His nephew committed suicide at the age of 17, and it basically broke Balthazar, who at this point felt like he'd failed everyone, and he followed his nephew a few years later after sliding into a deep, deep case of alcoholism.

_(end trigger warning)_

I'll add more to this section as things occur to me that I've left out -- there's some things that I know I'm forgetting. Whoops.

**FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS**

IF you have a question, you can either ask it in the comments here, or in the comments of the original story. I will try and answer it here to the best of my ability.

Q: Are you going to write more in this 'verse?

A: I don't have any immediate plans to, no, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. I'm sorry, I can't give a more definite answer than that; right now all of my focus as far as writing goes is on an alternate Season Nine fic that's probably going to be even longer than Best Years, heh.

 

 

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Q: What is [that squiggly thing](http://i43.tinypic.com/mrsk7l.png)?

A: I've seen all sorts of questions about that thing! It's just a scene divider. No hidden meaning! I figure it's probably one of those random scratched-out doodles you find on desks that have been in use for over a decade that people have layered their own drawings over. 

 

 

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Q: Are you ever going to tell us what was in Castiel's journal?

A: I'm afraid it was rather boring, although highly personal. Once they got past the sharing-of-journals thing other!Cas just basically detailed his abuse at the hands of his uncle, and the way he discovered he was also bisexual, and the way he discovered he was in love with Dean when Dean started dating Cody. There was at least one jerkoff fantasy, however, which is why Castiel was so intent that Dean never read it. Both of the boys' journals were complete fabrications, kind of an afterthought on Gabriel's part when he realized they'd need a sort of guidebook, although he didn't write them word for word, just created them based on intrinsic parts of the guys' personalities fused with the lives he'd built for them. 

 

 

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Q: Why did you make John a good guy?

A: Those of you who follow me on tumblr might have been surprised by that, because I'm not actually a John Winchester fan. In canon he was...pretty abusive and neglectful. But I am of the firm opinion that people are not just _inherently_ bad or good; their choices in life are what determine that. A John that never watched his wife die in front of him, never discovered the supernatural, who got his shit together and came back to his wife after their brief separation in Dark Side of the Moon, who toned down the drinking to something manageable? I'm pretty sure he'd be a decent dad, if a bit overbearing and strict. I like to think that Mary had a calming effect on him, too. 

 

 

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Q: HOW DID YOU WRITE 100K IN A MONTH?

A: I don't work full-time and once I've actually sat down and forced myself to write, the words tend to kind of pour out. I used to be a journalist, so I'm kind of used to writing several separate stories per day! It helped that I had kind of vaguely outlined what was going to happen so I had a framework to work with, and my friend Keri was fully willing to let me use her as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of and read sections to. Having a cheerleader REALLY helped!

 

 

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Q: Do you have a tumblr?

A: I do! I actually link to it in the first author's notes of the fic, but for those who didn't catch it, you can find me at disease-danger-darkness-silence.tumblr.com.

 

 

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Q: What made you think of this idea?

A: While I don't really mind the concept of the high school AU, the problem is that a good chunk of HS AU's are written by teenagers. This in itself isn't inherently an issue -- age doesn't preclude writing quality and ability -- but at times it becomes very obvious that the person in question is kind of writing a wish-fulfillment fic of what they WISHED high school was like, or they contain a lot of problematic aspects that the author doesn't realize are problematic. I have Asperger's syndrome, so a lot of the time I struggle reconciling normal!verse fic that doesn't reflect reality very well (I once quit a fic because they said someone homebrewed moonshine. Moonshine is distilled, first of all, and distilliation in the home is illegal for the very good reason that sometimes stills explode, and sometimes the resultant distillation is toxic). One day after struggling through a college AU that suffered from a lot of social issues that really bothered me, as well as TERRIBLE characterization, I just kind of huffed to myself that if Dean Winchester found himself in that AU he'd probably claw the author's eyes out. And then I was like, but what if Dean, as he is now, DID get stuck in an AU? And that's how we wound up here. 

 

 

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Q: Why did you go with the Dean as a Genius trope?

A: Because he is? Sammy even said so. Although I accidentally precogged that one. Actually, there's a lot of things I wrote into this fic (which was written well before the majority of S8 had come out) that wound up in Season Eight, including Sam calling Dean on his bullshit self-defeatism and calling him smart!

But yeah, no, I just...I see the connections both of the brothers can make and recognize that they're both deeply intelligent in different ways. Sam got validation of his intelligence growing up -- he got good grades and acknowledgement from his teachers and eventually got into a freaking Ivy League school based on his hard work and intelligence. John may not have acknowledged it so much in canon, but Sam at least got SOMETHING from people. Dean didn't. He was the problem child in school and when John implied that school wasn't important Dean rolled with it. He even says in S8 that he's the grunt and Sam's the brains (once again, something I accidentally predicted, whoops), but he's so clearly intelligent that it _hurts_. SO. I went with that trope to give him some of that validation. As Castiel said in Part Eight, a lot of your base of self is formed in high school. Dean had a chance to get a do-over and re-establish to himself who he was, and I wanted who he was to be someone he liked and could be proud of. 

 

 

*********

Q: Them getting married was really cliche, tho.

A: Yeah, it kinda was. I toyed around with them deciding not to do it, but in the end Dean basically put his foot down and insisted that he was gonna do it right this time so.

Any writer knows that when your character demands something, you ought to at _least_ reconsider. :3 Dean wanted his happily-ever-after, and I decided to give it to him.

 

 

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Q: Why would Dean stick around in that universe instead of immediately strike out hunting?

A: A lot of factors played into why Dean and Castiel played at being teenagers. The first one, the main one, I cover in the fic -- they're teenagers, or at least _look_ like teenagers, which means that if they just took off they'd be stopped at every chance by authority figures. Additionally, in this universe Dean had a family who cared about him, so if he and his best friend suddenly disappeared it _would_ be reported to the authorities, and it'd turn into a nationwide manhunt for two lost white boys. Dean knew this. 

Lastly: Sam. Sam, in this universe, did not know about his other life, something Gabriel did quite on purpose, because he knew it would tether Dean to Lawrence. He wouldn't be willing to strike out without Sam, but he couldn't pull Sam away from that life without committing several felonies. 

 

 

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Q: Who is Gabe comparing Vicky to at the end there?

A: Mary, mother of Jesus. She's who Gabriel fell in love with and developed a soul because of. Headcanon is that Mary was actually quite the spitfire and it got toned down in the Bible because sexism.

 

 

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Q: How long did beta-reading take?

A: FOREVER. That wasn't Lore's fault -- when I sent him a chapter I usually got it back within a few days -- the problem is that I had to read through that entire chapter before I sent it to him to turn it into a final draft, and then there were spots I had to completely rewrite, and then the BEGINNING got completely rewritten (Lore helped me with that _so much_ , he was basically watching the gdoc as I rewrote) and then of course that finicky ending that took me nine months to get out. So! Linearly, I released this fic almost exactly a year after I began writing it, but the actual beta-reading process, like the actual hours put into it, probably total a month or less. It was mostly Lore waiting for my picky ass to give in and send him the chapter. :3

 

 

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Q: How old are you?

A: 29, although when I wrote Best Years I was 28. You can see why your standard High School AU might not appeal to me much; I'm well beyond high school at this point and because I, personally, disliked a lot of the petty power plays that went on during high school I try not to remember it. 

 

 

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Q: What is a "taint?"

A: Taint is a slang term for the perinium, the bit of a cisguy's anatomy between his balls and his asshole. I'm sorry! I didn't realize people wouldn't recognize that slang.

 

 

*********

Q: Would Vicky be Hispanic or Spanish?

A: Vicky actually identifies as American, and if you ask for her ethnicity she'd tell you she's latina. Esmeralda would tell you the same; Esmeralda's mother immigrated to the United States well before Esmeralda was born. (Hispanic is a misnomer kind of erroneously used by like, census bureaus and the like, to refer to all latin-american peoples when in actuality the term means people from Hispanolia.)

 

 

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Q: Why would Gabriel put Castiel in that abusive situation with Balthazar?

A: There are two answers to this, neither of which are probably going to please anyone. The first is that Gabriel found the real-world Balthazar (remember, the man's name was Balthazar) and figured it'd be a good spot to stick Castiel. Real-world Balthazar wasn't specifically abusive, although he was often neglectful, of his nephew, but it would have taken just one drink, just one shitty situation, for it to TURN abusive. Real-world Balthazar, and fake-world Balthazar by extension, was extremely homophobic and had his nephew been friends with a queer person, he'd have probably used it as an excuse to torment him.

The second answer is that Gabriel is a dick. Fandom seems to like to forget that he tormented Sam for months, killing his brother over and over again and then leaving him dead just to screw with him. Gabriel is an interesting character and I like him, but he's also powerful, completely not a human, and capriciously cruel. Remember that when we met him, he was killing people as some sort of screwed up, cosmic just desserts. I'm not sure if Gabriel really knew what he was setting his brother up for, but if he did I don't particularly think he'd care, despite Castiel being his brother. After all, when Castiel came back from wherever Gabe stashed him in Changing Channels, Cas was _bleeding_.

 

 

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Q: (numerous times) Thank you for writing this!

A: THANK YOU FOR READING THIS! I am seriously jazzed that people are enjoying it; nothing gets a writer going like knowing they've impacted people even a little bit, brought a smile to their faces or made them cry. You're all the best, seriously.


End file.
